disclaimers: Am not Wes Craven. Do not own Red Eye. Am lamer obsessive fangirl. Please do not sue me, unless you're willing to take a settlement in lifetime supply of knitting yarn, which is my main asset. :-(
Thanks to ChocoboGoddess for the beta services!
Part 1: Aftershock
Lisa Reisert woke with a dry mouth and a pounding in her skull, wishing the 10-decibel roaring sound washing over her would just. go. away. She tried opening one eye, then thought the better of it when a sunbeam sliced through her brain like a knife.
-Jeez. What happened to me?-
Gradually, even with eyes closed, she realized she was not in her own bed; it was facing the wrong direction.
-Where am I?-
She felt the edge of the bed at her side, which was odd; usually she slept in the middle of the bed. Gingerly she tried to roll over to her other side, and bumped into something heavy, solid and warm next to her. The roaring suddenly clicked into place - breathing, right next to her ear. It was a body, curled up on its side behind her, and judging by the...extremity...poking her thigh, a very male, very naked and very aroused body.
Very slowly and carefully, she pried her eyes open. Screamed, and scooted backward to the edge of the bed.
Beside her, Jackson Rippner woke with a startled yell, tried to sit up and fell back onto the pillow with a pained groan.
"What the hell are -you- doing here!" Lisa shouted. He winced at the sound.
"Dying. I think. Hard to tell." Her panicky, gasping pants penetrated his throbbing skull. "Would you please stop that?"
"Stop what?" She looked around at the strange room, bare of any furnishings except a flimsy double bed and a floor lamp. "Where are we?"
"How the hell should I know?" he snapped back, jaw muscles clenching. Then he opened one eye a sliver. "Party."
She started to sling back a snide remark, and brought herself up short. "Party. ...I was on a date... And you - you were -"
"Working. Following somebody. Not you." He got both eyes open at last, grinned wolfishly. "More's the pity."
She glanced down, noticed her complete nudity, gasped and tried to cover herself with her hands. Then she spotted the time on her wristwatch. "Oh - hell! I'm two hours late for work!"
"Work!" Jackson bolted upright and groaned, but managed to stay vertical. "My cell phone. Pants pocket. Find it. -Now.-"
She backed up a step in surprise, stumbled, righted herself and spotted his slacks on the floor behind her. She scrabbled at the jumbled pile of clothing, found the cell phone and tossed it on the bed, then went back to sorting his clothing from hers, trying to tune out the aggravatingly loud sharp beeps.
"Hey. It's me. Yeah. Hung over. Something in my drink, I think. -Please- tell me I called you to take over surveillance before I got wasted. ...Seriously. I did call you? ...Oh. Thank. you. God. ...So the subject's covered, right? Has been all night? ...Oh. Thank you. Thank you. It may be awhile 'til I can get moving here, can you - Oh good. No problem then. Thanks."
He looked back at Lisa and found her fully dressed, though barefoot, in a black cocktail dress with a full knee-length skirt and a halter top with a split almost three inches wide running all the way down to the high-placed waist seam. She was flushed and sweating, her makeup was a bad memory, her hair was a maze of tangles and the dress was wrinkled beyond saving.
She looked spectacular.
A second set of throbs, lower down, made their presence felt over the pounding in his head. Lisa noticed the erection tenting the thin sheet covering him, and cleared her throat.
"Don't flatter yourself. It's just a morning thing. Happens to guys all the time." -Not usually when I'm in this much pain, though. How...-
She grimaced. "I can't find my underwear."
He lifted the sheet and looked down. "Sorry. Haven't got it."
"Doesn't matter. Gotta go." She threw a wadded pile of clothing - his favorite Hugo Boss suit - onto the bed, slipped into her backless high heels and wobbled out of the room as quickly as she dared.
Jackson fell back on the bed with a groan, only to shoot back upright at a shriek from the hallway beyond. -Lisa!-
He was down the hallway in a flash, struggling not to trip over the sheet wrapped around his waist. Brought himself up short behind her still form in the doorway of the large main room. "Lisa!"
"That - That -" She gasped helplessly, and finally just pointed at the room. He tore his eyes away from her and surveyed the scene.
"Yegggh."
The place was a shambles. The floor of the large, empty room was covered in plastic cups and bottles, broken glass, butts of both legal and illegal cigarettes, abandoned glow sticks both intact and leaking neon juice, assorted articles of clothing and jewelry, and a thick stew of noxious-smelling liquid spills and bodily fluids, as well as the odd unconscious teenage body here and there.
"If my panties are in there, I don't think I want them back...All I can think is, Who's going to have to clean all that up?" Still shocked, Jackson mumbled an agreement. "We're too old for this sort of thing, aren't we?"
"Yup. That was a party." He groaned at another explosion inside his skull and began pointing. "The bar was there. A DJ was set up over there. There were speakers and strobe lights all along there-" He pointed up, to a shelflike wainscoting running all the way around the room, a foot down from the ceiling. Lisa looked up and moaned in pain at the movement. "And if memory serves, which it only barely does at the moment, I think the only door out is -" He pointed to the far side of the room.
"Look on the bright side," Lisa chirped. "At least we have -shoes.-"
He looked down at his bare feet. "I -hope- I have shoes."
"You do. I almost tripped on 'em when I was getting dressed." He sighed in relief. "Although I think that goop may actually eat through shoes..."
"Waitasec. I thought I saw..." He ducked back into the corridor, cried "a-haa!" and returned with a pushbroom. "...a storage closet. Think you can clear us a path while I get dressed?"
"I can try. Assuming the stink doesn't knock me out." She put a hand to her pounding head. "What did you do to me?"
"Me! What did -you- do to -me-?"
She cleared her throat impatiently, and he rolled his eyes.
"Look. I don't really remember anything, okay? But I know myself well enough to make some assumptions. I don't use drugs on women except when I'm working, and even then it's just to kidnap, not to - well. So I know I wasn't the one who doped you. Now. Did you drug me?"
Lisa snorted. "You've got to be kidding me. I wouldn't even know where to -get- this kind of stuff, or what to ask for if I did. How do I know you didn't come here to get some kind of sick revenge on me?"
"Because I told you I'm working, on something else, and you know I don't lie," he snarled.
"You don't seem like the type for this kind of party."
"Neither do you," he snapped. "Okay. Here's the deal. The person I was following last night is -not- too old for this sort of thing. If that person figured out I was tailing them, I wouldn't put it past them at all to slip me something."
"And me?"
"Dunno. Lotta substances get passed around these parties. Would you have taken a drink from somebody you didn't know?"
"Please. Give me a little credit." She started to toss her hair and ended up groaning in pain.
"Given. But - would you have taken a drink from somebody you -did- know?"
"Not if it was you." He stared at her, hard and cold, and she shrugged. "Somebody else...Maybe. I guess. Depends on who it was. But I didn't wake up with somebody else - I woke up with you. Explain -that.-"
Jackson sighed and leaned against the doorjamb. "I know your head hurts. Do you, um...Are you seeing things like they're, I dunno, in super-hi-definition? Kind of more real than real?"
"...Yeah. And they're kind of, um, shimmery. Around the edges. Like a halo. You?" He nodded. "What did we get hit with?"
"Rave drugs, I'd guess. Exstacy maybe. I'm not a connoisseur."
She studied him closely. He was colorless, sweating and trembly. "You look about as unhealthy as I feel," she conceded. "And that's really saying something."
"My associate was ribbing me when I called him earlier. Said I was pretty wasted, just barely hanging on, and as soon as he got here I made a beeline straight for the sexiest thing in the room." His eyes roamed over her body. "I'm guessing that would be you."
An image popped into her head: Herself, pressed back against the wall beside the doorway they now stood in; Jackson pressed against the full length of her, kissing and sucking at her neck and shoulder and moaning 'mine'; her fingers combing through his hair over and over, mesmerized by its glossy color and soft texture.
Jackson watched her closely. Her eyes had glazed over and she was swaying slightly. He touched her forearm, and she gasped. "Lisa?"
"...I can't think about this now. I'm late. Get dressed. I gotta go. Now." She grabbed the pushbroom from him and started carefully blazing a trail through the mess. He stood and stared at her back.
"Fine. Sure. Whatever." He turned and limped painfully back down the hall.